A Party Without Me

My oldest nephew's first born son, Spencer Jack, had his 1st birthday yesterday. Spencer Jack had a birthday party. And I was not invited. I can't tell you how badly this hurts my feelings. When Spencer Jack's dad had birthday parties I used to get invited.

Spencer Jack's Uncle Joey mentioned to me some time ago that he would need to consult with me as to how to make the type birthday presents I used to make for his birthday parties. It was a very elaborate process. Involving a lot of unwrapping and varying levels of difficulty and a big mess. One year it was glitter in balloons that had to be popped to find clues as to where the actual present was located. (the trunk of my car). And then when the package was hauled in from the trunk the new package started up a fresh mess of unwrapping with squeals of fun from the kids, groans of will this never end from the stodgy grownups.

Now the actual birthday present was always totally lame. It was the elaborate packaging that was the actual present. Now, one of my, well, sort of humorless and at times slightly clueless, yet self-righteously overbearing siblings felt, I guess, that I needed to be taught a lesson. I believe it was on my birthday, maybe it was Christmas, I don't remember. But she'd gone through a little bother to wrap something sort of remotely like I did for my nephews. When I got to what was inside it was a jar of peaches with a note saying "How does it feel now?" Or something like that. I guess this was supposed to teach me how awful it was to put my nephews through the extreme trauma of opening one of my birthday presents and end up causing them to be upset because I didn't buy them a video game. Trouble was, I like peaches so the lesson was totally lost on me.

Nonetheless, the peach incident was confusing to me. So when the next nephew birthday invite came along I politely declined the invitation, saying that I didn't want to upset my nephew with one of my awful birthday presents. I was then told it would break the boy's heart if I didn't do my usual birthday thing that was the highlight of their birthday parties. That would be the nephew who told me he needed to consult with me as to what to do for Spencer Jack's birthday party. I told him to wait a couple years, that Spencer Jack was too young for that type fun.

I wonder if the reason I didn't get invited to Spencer Jack's birthday party is because maybe his Grandma (it was she who sent me the pic above taken at Spencer Jack's party) told Spencer Jack's mother what a nightmare it was to clean up after one of my birthday presents. I remember the year the package exploded shooting thousands of those little circles you make with a paper punch, apparently she was finding those paper punches for months. I recollect hearing that the glitter from the popped balloons had been a gift that kept on giving too.

I will admit, all these years later, part of the fun was watching my sister-in-law, a certified neat freak, squirm as she saw the mess unfold. Of course when it was all over I'd help the nephews pick it all up. But you can't easily pick up glitter and paper punches.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Spencer Jack. Sorry I couldn't be at your party.

Electronic Bad Wiring

I grow tired of all the complications I encounter with all these new devices that are/were supposed to make our lives simpler and easier. Of late it's been one aggravation after another. All electronically related.

One aggravation is cell phones. Currently Lulu in Tacoma is cut off from the world due to her third cell phone in 2 weeks ceasing to work. When she does have a cell phone that can make a call those calls are very unreliable. As in at any point in a call, 2 seconds in or 20 minutes in there can be this annoying boop boop noise and then the disconnect. Or the latest variation is I can hear Lulu saying are you there are you there with me replying yes over and over again. And then the disconnect.

A couple weeks ago my durangotexas.com website was taken over by the Ebay home page. Before that all my websites had their index pages altered with javascript that caused a pop up window that opened a Vietnamese music website.

The past few days I've been having email problems. As in trouble sending. And then yesterday that woe escalated when I was also not able to receive email. I submitted a support ticket. But as the hours passed I got more annoyed. I knew if they were having a serious issue calling the toll free number would put me in a long line. So, I did their live chat thing. I don't know why it is called that because you aren't chatting, you're typing.

It only took about 5 minutes before Alexander Gudonov in my webhost's bizarre Ukrainian call center asked how he could help. I asked if they were having an email problem. He said yes there had been a problem. I asked when would it be fixed. He said it was already fixed. I clicked on my email and saw that he was right, it was fixed.

And then this morning I'm once more having trouble sending email. I was about to do the live chat thing again when it started working again.

Yesterday the Google AdSense ads were acting up for awhile. As in they would not load. This would cause the page load to keep going and going. Logging into the AdSense account didn't work either. But this problem did not last long.

And then this morning I found out that this Feedjit thing I use to put Live Traffic info on some of my websites, like this very blog, stopped working. I went to the Feedjit website and learned they'd done some maintenance thing overnight that they said was successful. If by successful they mean it no longer works, I guess they are right. I'm assuming this is going to start working again.

I'm done whining now. It wasn't therapeutic.

UPDATE: After I posted the Blog above I then started having problems with the Blogger website! As in if you tried to go to a Blog you got a message that there was a server error. If I tried to log in to the Blog all sorts of odd things happened. Now, several hours later, everything seems to be working again. Well, everything I've checked on, I forgot to mention that Google AdSense also went screwy with a message in many languages saying there was a problem. I'll go see if that's fixed as soon as I'm done with this.

Texas Snowman

After being cooped up much of yesterday due to ice, snow and cold it was nice to escape today to Oakland Lake Park. You wouldn't know we had a blizzard here yesterday except for some archaeological evidence, such as the snowman you see in this photo with the Fort Worth UFO in the background. Other snowmen in the park had already collapsed into their component parts and were now just slowly melting balls. But this one guy remained intact, standing proud with his orange nose pointing towards the lake.

The snowman looked a bit lonely, standing like a guard in front of the tennis courts, and with the snow gone from the ground and Texas back to its usual brown color he looks really out of place, like ice in a desert.

More Texas Two Step Chaos & Weather Woes

We are back with clear blue sky again after yesterday's weather extreme. This morning did not bring the expected ice covering. Yesterday's afternoon sleet canceled about 500 flights out of D/FW, leaving some people stranded on planes for over 5 hours. Which is one of my many personal visions of a living hell.

Meanwhile reports continue to accumulate like snow regarding chaos and confusion at the second step of the Texas Two Step. One caucus goer reported his wife called party officials for help during their caucus meltdown, the person who answered did not know what to do, so the caller asked to speak to a supervisor who she heard say "just hang up on her".

On a plus note a Texas legislator is introducing a proposal to end the ridiculous Texas Two Step as practiced by the Texas Democrat party.

If you've not heard what the Texas Democrat Two Step process is, or don't get why it is absurd, let me lay it out for you. 55 percent of the delegates are chosen directly by the voters, with each vote weighted differently based on how the voter's precinct voted in the last 2 elections. Another 19 percent of the delegates are chosen at precinct caucuses with vague rules regarding how to weigh the votes. 11 percent of the delegates are chosen at the state convention and the remaining 15 percent are appointed by party bosses, a leftover from the good ol' boy network that used to run things.

Now do you get why we still don't know for sure who won the Texas primary election on the Democrat side, Obama or Hillary?

The Republican Party in Texas uses what would seem a revolutionary democratic method for picking their delegates in that 99 percent of the delegates are chosen directly by the voters. What a concept. And there is no chicanery regarding 'weighting' the votes based on past elections. Each vote is counted equally. I don't know how that remaining 1 percent of the delegates is chosen by the Republicans. I do know that John McCain is the nominee. And that he won Texas.

It's Snowing in Texas

A little before noon the National Weather Service changed today's forecast from a snow advisory starting about 4pm to a Winter Storm Warning starting at noon. A few minutes after that the white stuff began falling. Before the weather got dire I was getting ready to drive to Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market to get cilantro and other things I needed to finish the chili I made this morning in a crockpot using ground venison I got from a local hunter who'd given it to a local Puerto Rican who can not cook.

When got outside I found out it was very icy and slippery. I debated whether I should be careful or throw caution to the snow. The latter option won out. By the time I got on a street and driving up a hill I found I had some traction problems. I made it as far as the Albertsons parking lot and re-debated the wisdom of going cilantro hunting under these conditions. Sure, I could have gone in Albertsons and bought cilantro and likely easily gotten safely back here. But I do not like Albertsons and was in need of adventure.

So, on to Wal-Mart I went. But I needed gas. $3.05 a gallon. Like I've mentioned before, when I get gas I call my mom in Phoenix to tell her how much it cost and what the weather is doing. She had trouble believing I was being snowed on. So did I.

I got to Wal-Mart driving slow like everyone else. The parking lot was not too slippery. Quickly got my stuff. Helped a little old lady with a cane load her stuff into her car. Drove slowly back here, slowly sliding down my hill, gently applying the brakes. Got to my parking place, took the pic you see above, looking out my vehicle window, walked carefully to my entry, got in, turned up the heat, chopped the cilantro and am now in the process of hunkering down til this is over. Everything outside should be covered in thick ice by morning.

Daylight Savings Time starts Sunday, Spring in 2 weeks. Global Warming has yet to arrive in North Texas.

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UPDATE: It is now about 4pm. Snow has been falling hard for a couple hours. It is freezing. Everything is icing up. Schools have been closing early. People have been leaving work to try and get home before the roads become impassable and impossible. By morning North Texas should be on one icy cold lockdown.

Global Warming, Snow & the Texas Two Step

It is only a couple weeks til the start of Spring. And yet this afternoon North Texas is predicted to get snow. Possibly up to a couple inches. When is this Global Warming thing you hear so much about scheduled to kick in?

It now looks like what I predicted days ago is about to be official, that being that though Hillary won the Texas primary vote and the most delegates from that win, Obama won the Caucus Chaos by a larger percentage and thus won more of those delegates and is expected to come out ahead with 99 delegates to Hillary's 94, gave or take a few in either direction.

Meanwhile the scandal over the largely botched second part of the Texas Two Step, that being the caucuses that Barack won, continues to grow. Angry voters are being heard, made more angry as they share horror stories and realize their experience was not unique, but was more the norm.

In one D/FW suburb, Mansfield, voting did not end til 20 minutes before 10pm. Many of the hundreds who showed up at 7pm for the caucus left in frustration as the hours clicked by. These people were left standing outside in the cold. And to add more pain to the pain, when many of them tried to escape they found their vehicles stuck in mud requiring a tow truck to unstick them.

Other precincts broke the election rules by allowing caucusers to sign in before the voting ended and letting them make their caucus choice. Other precincts did not realize that once the caucus began a voter could make his presidential choice and then leave without participating in the rest of the caucus.

At a caucus location in Denton County over 1000 showed up. People got so frustrated by the confusion that at least half of them left. One of the frustrated said, "I've never experienced anything like this. It kind of makes me want to leave the entire state."

I think that is a common sentiment here at times.

Caucus Chaos

My experience at last night's Texas caucus was not an isolated one of a kind fluke. Even though the Caucus Chaos that I witnessed was not mentioned in this morning's Fort Worth Star-Telegram similar scenarios played out at voting locations all over Texas to varying degrees of chaos, confusion, disorder, turmoil, discord, pandemonium and borderline anarchy.

At some polling places in Tarrant County (location of Fort Worth) the primary voting ran over an hour late, causing the caucusing to begin over an hour late.

In many locations, when the caucusing finally began, more chaos followed with no one knowing what to do and then, when the process finally got under way, running out of sign in sheets and ballots. As a Hillary supporter, Michelle Coomer put it, "I was so appalled at how it was run. It was a terrible mess. It was a fiasco. There was no organization."

Approximately 500 people were left out in the cold at Fort Worth's Southwest Subcourthouse waiting for the voting to end. Some people had been directed to the wrong voting place leaving them not enough time to get to the correct location.

Various locations reported people showing up to vote in the primary who had early voted, taking literally those campaign slogans telling them to vote twice. Other voters somehow thought they had to participate in the caucus or their primary vote would not count.

It is not yet known who won the caucuses. It is known Hillary won the primary. Like I said before, it is likely Obama will end up with more Texas delegates because it is likely he won the caucuses.

So far I've not heard any noises, beyond my own, regarding declaring the caucus results fraudulent due to all the problems and the large number of people who were unable to participate due to all the ineptitude.

Texas Caucus Debacle

It is 7:27 pm. I am already back from the second step of the Texas Two Step. The caucus. I arrived at the caucus location at 6:45. A line of cars was backed up on to the street at the entry to the parking lot. The parking lot was full. Some voters were leaving and not staying for the caucus and those were the available parking spots. By the time I made it off the street it was parking lot gridlock.

Some were trying to turn around and bail. This resulted in an ugly stand-off between two women drivers. I could not believe there was no police presence to help with this mayhem.

So, I called 911. The dispatcher sounded sleepy. I explained the problem. Told her it was at the East Regional Library Voting/Caucus site. She said she needed a street. I said, I dunno, I think it's Bridge Street. She said she also needed a cross street. I said there is none and the cops will know where the library is.

At that point one of the election workers showed up trying to untangle the mess. I told her I was on the phone to 911 and asked where are the police, this is getting ugly?

A couple minutes later election worker traffic directors started going around asking those in cars if they were here to vote in the primary, if so, just park anywhere, and go vote. And then they decided to just tell everyone to park as best they could. I could see this could get me blocked in, so I drove to a spot where I thought that no one could block me.

By now there was a large crowd milling about outside the library. More cars continued to enter the parking lot. Some exited and began parking on a side street. By the time I escaped that side street was full of parked cars on both sides of the street for at least a half mile.

After I parked I ran into the election worker I'd told earlier that I'd called 911. She was now in full traffic director mode. I told her she was the prettiest traffic cop I'd ever seen. That seemed to please her.

I wanted to take some pics of the crowd. There was a festive atmosphere. A guy stood on a bench and preached to the crowd. He sounded very insane. I got inside the library and saw the size of the crowd. It was not even 10 after 7 and there were enough people to fill up 10 of the caucus size rooms.

And the voting had not ended. I knew this was a boondoggle that did not need any further participation from me. So, I began my escape. The traffic cop who I'd told was pretty saw me leaving, then grabbed my arm and said I had to stay, that my one vote might be the one that made the difference.

I didn't think so. What I thought was this was an absurd boondoggle and whoever is the controlling authority that validates elections needs to immediately make whatever move they need to make to invalidate these caucuses. I saw many people giving up. As I walked among the cars most had their windows down. I'd ask if they were here for the primary or the caucus. Almost everyone answered caucus. I saw two cars in which women were crying in frustration.

On the plus side I saw many people who brought their children. I think they were feeling really proud about who they were getting to vote for and wanted their kids there. I saw many acts of kindness.

And one big bad overarching case of a really bad idea going badly awry.

The Texas Two Step stepped right into this mess without thinking. This election night disaster could have been avoided. It is not like it has not been known for some time that tonight was going to be a big deal.

I'm appalled. This is two elections in a row now here where I have been sort of disenfranchised. Jimmy Carter needs to monitor the Texas elections like he does other Third World countries.

Voted Without a Glitch

I got to my voting place about half past noon. Lots of cars in the parking lot, but no line to wait in to vote. I just walked up to the first person I saw, handed her my registration card and helped her figure out what my last name was and where it was located on the alphabet. Eventually, another precinct worker (is that what they are called?) showed up and between the 3 of us we were able to find me on the voter roll.

I asked the precinct workers if this little room was actually where the caucus was going to take place. They confirmed that it was. I asked how can that work? Various voices chimed in with various comments along the lines that it may be a disaster, we don't know what we'll do about parking, we don't know where to put the people. And that they are hoping to have a police presence in place. I can't wait.

Each time I've voted in Texas the method has been different. The last time a sort of video game device was used. If I remember right you entered a code that you'd been given upon signing in. You then spun a dial to move to different spots on the electronic ballot. You could go back and forth over the pages changing your vote if you wanted to. When you were satisfied you were done you hit a button and a nice big American flag appeared on the screen and waved in the wind. I don't remember if music played. I suspect not.

The voting process today seemed to have gone back in time, somewhat. I was handed a paper ballot, then directed to a voting booth. It was not very private. You had a pen and filled in a square by whoever you wanted to vote for. The guy next to me asked the election worker if he had to vote for everyone on the list because all he wanted to vote for was Barack.

When I finished voting for the only person I was voting for, mainly because I had no clue about any of the other races or people running in them, despite some shady looking guy handing me a brochure when I walked in asking me to vote for him. I believe he was running for city council. So, upon finishing voting I was led to a copy/fax machine looking thing and told where to stick the ballot. It was sucked in, scanned and was not seen by me again.

I thought it quite odd that the election worker could clearly see who I was voting for. That did not seem right.

There was no Hillary sign at the voting location. There was a large Obama sign. And many others.

Sunny Sky Voting Weather

The view out my window has returned to a nice shade of Texas blue after yesterday's unseemly all day gray drizzle. The predicted iced version of water falling did happen right on schedule, arriving about 6pm in the form of frozen pellets that seemed to be a mutation of a snowflake and hail.

Some areas of the D/FW Metroplex must have had a lot more snow/hail than I saw, because this morning while driving in Arlington I saw several cars with about 4 inches of white stuff on them. And others with lesser amounts.

Texas Primary Election officials have now let it be known that they are very nervous about what is going to happen tonight. Their worries are the same I mentioned yesterday, as in too many people in too small of spaces with too little parking to handle those who return for part 2 of the Texas Two Step, that being the caucus. They are also afraid that the voting may go on well past 7 due to the requirement allowing anyone in line the right to vote, as long as they are in line before the 7 o'clock poll closing time.

The caucus can not begin until the last voter has voted. Where the caucusers are supposed to wait I have no idea. I may just go check out the spectacle. And then bail. Unless it seems interesting.